Chapter 13 Amelia
THIRTEEN
AMELIA
Mirabelle fetched Amelia long after the sun set, and a terrible darkness rose in its place. Uncanny in its crypt-like quiet, the house was vacuous and gluttonous in its consumption of light and sound. Silent shadows held dominion there.
“He needs to talk to you,” Mirabelle announced as if she’d rehearsed where to place the punchy emphasis.
It came down to need.
I don’t care what he needs.
Amelia bit her tongue, though she wasn’t trying to spare feelings, and followed Mirabelle downstairs.
The black dress she wore was soft and exquisite, and Mirabelle had even rinsed off Amelia’s shoes.
They squelched with each step through the belly of the mansion, and Amelia peered into the rooms they passed—palatial spaces with giant furniture stuffed to the seams and airy fabrics framing tall windows.
A fountain babbled in the outside courtyard where flowering vines enrobed stone-work lattice. The terra cotta staircase emptied to an expansive terrace below. Just beyond a glittering pool, globes of light dotted the perimeter of a sitting area. Mirabelle motioned to a silhouette at the table.
“He’s over there.”
Amelia’s stomach flipped with a woozy rush, something like racing down a drop-off hill, and her palms were clammy despite the mild breeze. Weighed down with fear in one foot and defiance in the other, she didn’t budge.
“Hear him out,” Mirabelle urged. “He’s not as bad as you think.”
Easy for her to say. Mirabelle couldn’t see what was right in front of her. Blood affinity blinded, but she tied a blindfold tight for good measure. With nothing more to say, Mirabelle left, and Amelia took a moment to gain her bearings.
The Moriarty mansion perched on a craggy bluff that overlooked black desert, both stunning and frightening in its emptiness. In the valley below, a road cut through like a string of Christmas lights that glittered red and white and wove in a tangle.
I could run. Just follow the road. That would be foolish. She wouldn’t make it that far or anywhere at all.
Unlike the trees back home, the palm leaves didn’t whisper with the wind but rattled like dry bones.
No one built stucco houses with tiled roofs in Portland because the desert existed in only a handful of states, and Oregon sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
Far from home, Amelia had no choice but to face the shadow in the dark.
Remember who you are.
She was the daughter of Callum Havick, who had to be close to finding her. He had his flaws like anyone else, but he was smart, and he was brave, and maybe she’d inherited the best parts of him or could pretend at least.
Amelia stood tall and drank in the night’s crisp air that smelled sweet and clean. A halo of light enveloped the seating area where crickets sang and moths flittered.
Leaned over with his forearms on his knees, Emory stared at the space between his feet. A cigarette’s cherry ember glowed as the filter met his lips.
Amelia approached with loathing that soaked to the bone. The presentation of it all would make her sick. Did he like her trotted out with bare thighs in a black dress? Apparently so.
The cigarette paper sizzled as Emory rendered it to ash with a long drag. Head tilted skyward, he appraised her with smoke spilling from his mouth.
Cleaned of gore and with her hair air-dried in glossy waves, she surely looked different, but so did he. A vision of fury earlier, Emory appeared at ease now. He gestured to an empty seat at the table and watched with guarded intrigue as Amelia sat.
“You smoke?” he asked and offered her the lit cigarette.
She shook her head as the chair’s cold metal met the back of her thighs.
“Me neither,” Emory said and studied the horizon.
The paltry light did little to gentle sharp bones, brooding eyes, and a five o’clock shadow that further accentuated his jawline.
He still commanded the space around him, a quality Amelia assumed was immutable, and his imposing intensity hadn’t waned.
Unwavering and dangerous, it roiled beneath a calm surface.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Nevada.”
So far from home, Amelia shivered with a chill. No one will look for me here.
Emory took one last drag and dropped the cigarette to the ground where he squashed it with his boot heel. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t make it past his lips.
“Where’s my mother?” Amelia demanded and drew her shoulders back. Remember who you are.
Emory’s gaze roved her body. “No idea.”
“And my father? Is he safe?”
“What the fuck makes you think I know what happened to your parents?” A mirthless laugh escaped him. “Oh, that’s right. You think I had something to do with last night.”
“Didn’t you? Something horrible happens and you’re there, by what, coincidence?”
Emory’s chest rose with an incensed breath. If Amelia was meant to passively sit and listen, she was making a fine mess of it.
“I told you I didn’t. Take it or leave it. I won’t tell you again. You were targeted last night, and you know it. They came for you. Why?”
“I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to anyone!”
Emory laughed again at her expense, the derision apparent.
“That’s not how it works. Good people get fucked over all the time, and no one cares that they didn’t deserve it.”
“I care. You’re telling me those people, whoever they were, wanted me dead.”
“Want. They want you dead,” he corrected with hard emphasis to make her understand. “They don’t call it a wash because you disappeared off the face of the goddamn earth. They’re coming for you and for me and they’re going to keep coming.”
“Who are they?”
With fiery exasperation, Emory sat up in his seat.
“Who do you think? Who might possibly want you dead?”
Last night, Amelia would’ve answered with his name. Her father had painted a violent and terrifying picture of the Moriartys—men who murdered indiscriminately and espoused strange traditions that led them down a path of darkness. Central to the mystery was the man sitting across from her.
There was, of course, one other answer.
“Velascos,” Amelia said on a hush.
Emory nodded, but his delight in mocking her vanished. He crossed his legs at the ankles and folded his arms over his chest.
“I need to go home. My dad needs me,” Amelia insisted. Maybe she’d gain some ground—Emory was human, after all—but he shut it down with a firm shake of the head.
“You can’t. The Velascos finish what they start. You go home, you die. Simple as that.”
He made it sound so clinical, as if he couldn’t summon sympathy for her life upended and hanging in the balance. If it was all the same to him, then why bother?
“You honestly expect me to believe you’re protecting me?” Pulse on the rise, Amelia coiled her fingers around the arms of the chair. “My father’s entire existence has been to take you down. If you’re going to hurt me, then just get on with it and stop with the bullshit.”
Emory’s eyes flicked to her. Where there was fire before, he turned to ice and cut deep with cruelty meant to wound.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it already. I could’ve left you to die, to burn to death like your mother.”
Amelia erupted in a flash that propelled her out of her seat. She lunged at him with balled fists. She’d never hit anyone before, never dreamed of it, until then.
Emory sprung up and snatched her by the wrist. He squeezed hard enough that Amelia collapsed back into her seat and trembled in his grasp. Emory lurched over her, seething as he spoke.
“You think you’re brave, but I saw you before, and I see you now. You crumble and all I have to do is look at you. Feel that? You’re shaking like a leaf. How brave are you now?”
Brave enough that she lifted her eyes to him. Up close, Emory got his look; the fear surely flooding her face and the frantic pulse at her wrist that thumped against his palm. She got her look too; the way he fractured with fickle guilt, gone before it took hold but enough to dispel his anger.
Emory released her and reclaimed his seat with strange affliction. When his eyes found her, he seemed to measure some conflict in himself, and when he spoke again, Amelia didn’t know which part of him had won.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “That’s not what this is about.”
Amelia couldn’t reconcile his words with the ones that’d come before or the bruises blooming beneath her skin. Then there was Brian; sweet Brian, with disheveled curls and a lopsided smile.
“You already have,” she said.
In a feeble effort to put distance between them, Amelia sunk in her seat. Emory ran his fingers through his hair and dragged his chair over until they faced each other. Lunar shadows sharpened his features, and he moved stealthily for such a tall, long-limbed man.
“Here’s the deal, Amelia. I’ll keep you safe, keep you alive. In exchange, you’ll answer some questions for me because there are things I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.”
She glared at him. “Sounds like your problem, not mine.”
“Don’t fuck with me!” Emory snapped, his voice ringing heavy in the night. “I said I didn’t want to hurt you, not that I wouldn’t. I find it hard to believe you had no idea who came after you or why.”
He slipped to the edge of his seat again, and Amelia did the same, the distance between them closing toward collision. If he could rage, so could she. Amelia’s blood pumped hot, and the chill of the night vanished along with her fear of Emory so full of false threats.
“I know exactly who came after me. You did. You were the one who orchestrated a kidnapping, the one who had your men murder my friend then drug me and bring me here. You!”
Emory couldn’t argue the logic and, to his credit, didn’t try. He stared at her from beneath his brows as a sweet breeze enveloped them. It lifted the loose ends of his hair and carried the warm spice of his cologne. It tempered something in them both.